The Top 10 Indycar Drivers of 2014 1

AUTOSPORT+ features: The top 10 IndyCar drivers of 2014 1

Feature published on September 23rd 2014

The top 10 IndyCar drivers of 2014 Power became champion at last, Castroneves missed out again, Montoya starred and even Huertas won. MARK GLENDENNING ranks the stars of a wildly unpredictable IndyCar year

The immediate aftermath of the 2014 IndyCar season felt a bit like the recovery period that follows a very large party. There was a sense that an awful lot had just happened in a very short period of time, but processing it was a bit of a struggle.

Somewhere in the haze, Takuma Sato had kicked the season off by starting from pole in St Petersburg, Tony Kanaan rounded things out by winning for the first time in Dario Franchitti's old car at Fontana, and Will Power spared himself another 12 months of talking about near-misses by finally securing his first IndyCar championship.

Along the way, Juan Pablo Montoya won a race, which a lot of people didn't expect. Carlos Huertas also won a race. People didn't expect that either. (Truth be told, that bit still doesn't seem real).

Ryan Hunter-Reay won the Indianapolis 500, and also took the most Xbox-esque victory ever at Iowa Speedway. There was, literally, an earthquake. We all went to the Indy road course for the first time. We all went to Houston for the last time. And all of this, and more, was rammed into just over six months.

http://plus.autosport.com/premium/feature/6195/ © 2014 AUTOSPORT.com AUTOSPORT+ features: The top 10 IndyCar drivers of 2014 2 Picking standouts from a series as competitive as IndyCar was in 2014 is extraordinarily difficult: the fact that 11 different drivers clocked up wins over the course of the year merely underlines just how much depth there is in the field. But some stood out more than others.

Here, after much deliberation, is AUTOSPORT's top 10 of 2014.

1. WILL POWER

You could make a strong argument for the Australian having been the best overall driver in IndyCar for about three years, but the fact that he only now has something to show for it is a reminder that his is a uniquely-flawed brilliance.

Even his championship year was not perfect - he led the series in penalties - but he worked to successfully eliminate those mistakes over the final half-dozen races.

Aside from his occasional tendency to think himself into trouble, it's becoming increasingly hard to poke holes in his armour.

Power has looked more comfortable on big ovals over the past year or so, as underlined by his stunning win at Fontana in 2013, but his dominance at Milwaukee this time around proved that he can also get the job done on the little quirky tracks.

Prior to Fontana he said that he felt he was driving more naturally than he had in years, and if that's true then it's an ominous warning to his rivals for 2015.

2. HELIO CASTRONEVES

On the eve of the final round at Fontana, AUTOSPORT was chatting to Helio Castroneves. "I'm not going to ask you anything about the championship," we said. "Good," he replied, clearly sick of talking about it.

The Brazilian desperately wanted to be the driver who made Team Penske champion again; instead, as a now-four-time runner-up, the sensation of leading the points only to have it slip away is becoming all too familiar.

After a pretty consistent year, Castroneves' fortunes wobbled at precisely the wrong moment - the throttle problem on the grid at Mid-Ohio and the opening lap accident damage at Sonoma were catastrophic.

What shouldn't be forgotten is that he came within less than 0.1s of joining the ranks of four-time Indy 500 winners, and at 39, he still looks as motivated as ever.

3. SIMON PAGENAUD

In his three seasons with Schmidt Peterson Motorsport, Simon Pagenaud has never finished lower than fifth in the standings.

That's pretty remarkable considering the stature of SPM relative to some of the teams that finish behind it.

Even more remarkable is that prior to a disastrous final round at Fontana, he was third in the standings and the only Honda driver capable of denying Penske the championship.

The Frenchman continues to improve with every season, and he thrives within the compact, efficient structure at Schmidt. (Although how long he remains there is one of the hot topics of the off-season).

He also clicked well with new team-mate Mikhail Aleshin. All in all, a year to be proud of.

4. JUAN PABLO MONTOYA

Montoya's return to single-seaters after seven years of wrestling with stock cars went exactly as he predicted: slow start, decent on ovals early on, strong everywhere later.

The only real surprise was that a lot of people didn't believe him.

His lack of experience with the softer 'red' tyres was a huge handicap in the early races, and street courses remained something of a bugbear all year. (The exception being Houston, where he could have won the Sunday race had he not underestimated Huertas's fuel load).

His Pocono win was an obvious highlight, but he was a consistent podium threat during the second half of the year.

There's plenty of spark left in the Colombian yet.

5. SCOTT DIXON

The 2013 champion was uncharacteristically subdued early in the year, and later admitted that the upheaval around the Ganassi team had taken a toll.

That said, he was made to look worse than he actually was by the fact that his season bottomed out at the Indy 500, which was one of three races to pay double points.

In finishing 29th that weekend he fell into a championship hole that proved almost impossible to recover from, although he gave it a pretty good shot with an extraordinary win at Mid-Ohio and victory at Sonoma.

6. TONY KANAAN

Kanaan faced a tough task in replacing Dario Franchitti at Ganassi, especially against the backdrop of other changes taking place around the team.

But he stepped up to the challenge with a resolve that silenced any lingering doubters, and was consistently strong over the second half of the season.

The true depths of his desire to win in the #10 car became fully apparent through his devastation at being denied a deserved win at Iowa, where he was ambushed by Hunter-Reay on new tyres at the final restart.

You'd need a heart of stone not to have been pleased to see him finally get one on the board for Ganassi at Fontana.

7. CARLOS MUNOZ

The Colombian rookie does most of his talking in the car, and while he was rarely an outright threat for the win, he was a reliable presence in the top 10.

His consistency is borne out by the fact that he was the second-highest placed Andretti Autosport driver in the points, ahead of both Marco Andretti and James Hinchcliffe.

Munoz is also versatile - his three podiums came on street courses (Long Beach and Houston) and an oval (Pocono), and he fell just one position short of adding a road course to that tally at Mid-Ohio.

There's still lots of room for refinement, but the raw materials look promising.

8. RYAN HUNTER-REAY

A good highlight reel year for the 2012 champion, with wins at Barber, the Indy 500 and the manic Iowa race, but he and the Andretti team could be maddeningly patchy elsewhere.

Some was bad luck: his season might have looked very different were it not for his suspension problems at Pocono, a double-points race.

But there were also occasions where he was the architect of his own downfall. Hunter-Reay's in-car aggression is part of his charm, but as weekends like Long Beach demonstrated, it sometimes turns around and bites him.

9. JOSEF NEWGARDEN

Newgarden might be a surprising pick for a guy who was 13th in the points, but he and the small Sarah Fisher Hartman team took some real strides in their third year together.

He deserved a podium at Long Beach, finally got one at Iowa, and hit a rich vein of form late in the season.

For a young driver with a modestly-resourced single-car team, you can't have asked much more, and it's going to be fascinating to see how he gets on in 2015 when he has the benefit of a team-mate for the first time.

10. SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS

KV Racing Technology is still a long way from being an organisation that keeps Penske awake at night, but 2014 was a year of real progress, and new arrival Bourdais deserves a large chunk of the credit for pushing the team toward the front.

His glee at winning from pole in Toronto, taking him back to Victory Circle for the first time since his Champ Car years was palpable, and he was almost as excited to earn pole again and finish second at Mid-Ohio a couple of weeks later.

The team still has work to do, but Bourdais gave it a sense of focus in 2014 that had previously been missing.

OTHER BUSINESS

The political sniping that formed part of the IndyCar landscape over the past few years has largely been eradicated now - publicly, at least - and the paddock is a more harmonious place than it was a couple of seasons ago.

The high standard of competition that has been the calling card of the DW12 era remained as strong as ever this year, which was something to savour ahead of the arrival of aero kits next season.

There's still a sense of chagrin over the fact that the quality of the product hasn't acted as a sort of tractor beam to all of the fans from the CART era that vanished during the split, but for the first time, there is a sense that the optimism is justified.

TV numbers were up substantially in 2014 after several years of decline, and this in a year when both NASCAR and Formula 1's figures have taken a hit.

How much this has to do with the radically condensed calendar remains to be seen, but the work is not over yet.

http://plus.autosport.com/premium/feature/6195/ © 2014 AUTOSPORT.com AUTOSPORT+ features: The top 10 IndyCar drivers of 2014 12 While the TV ratings have improved, they are still low, although sharing networks with NASCAR next year might help on that front.

Attendances at some events also need to be looked at, especially for ovals. Pocono on July 4 weekend doesn't work, and Fontana's near-desert climate isn't compatible with a race in late summer.

But this is all fine-tuning. The basic package is excellent; IndyCar's short-term challenge now is to maintain its new-found momentum through a six-month off-season.